Wally Found – Google let it be known that they had hidden a “Where’s Wally” appearance in the new Street View imagery in the UK. The folks at GoogleSightseeing were the first to find him right here.

Unemployment Map – GEB reader Tommy Albo imported unemployment data by county for the US back in February. The data came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and represent unemployment numbers as of December 2008. View the map here. While the map is very somber in terms of what it means to the lives of a lot of people, the visualization is definitely worth checking out as it shows off Google Earth’s ability to show a vast array of data effectively.

1000-Year Old Fish Trap – Scientists found evidence of a 1000 year-old fish trap in the aerial imagery of Google Earth off the coast of Wales. In this news report, they showed a picture and discussed how they verified the find by scuba diving on the site. The fish trap is a v-shaped row of rocks beneath the sea which, along with nets, trapped the fish as the rivers tides and currents changed. They didn’t release any coordinates, but I was able to use the photo to find the location in Google Earth.

New GeoEye Photos – Google is building some more anticipation for the high-quality photos the new GeoEye-1 satellite will bring to Google Earth. The satellite was launched last fall, but it can take months to test and verify the systems, and get the data processing systems working properly. The link here shows several photos, and you can fly to each location to see them in a GE plugin. They are using the KML feature called “Regions” to share very large images. Google has exclusive rights to the online publication of GeoEye-1 imagery.

About Frank Taylor

Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was first released. He has worked with 3D computer graphics and VR for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank completed a 5.5 year circumnavigation of the earth by sailboat in June 2015 which you can read about at Tahina Expedition, and is a licensed pilot, backpacker, diver, and photographer.

Comments

the Wally photo points up an interesting question, for me at least. I know that Google fuzzes out faces and license plates, and that they supposedly have automated the recogition of faces and their blurring. But, why is there a blurry spot on Wally’s arm? I see lots if instances where it looks like Google blurred a spot in the photo that is not “sensitive”. How would their robot mistake an arm for a face?

This blog and its author are not an official source of information from Google that produces and owns Google Earth
Google and Google Earth are trademarks of Google Inc..
All image screenshots from Google Earth are Copyright Google.
All other trademarks appearing here are the trademarks of their respective owners.